moving in
This was originally written on 05.01.2002.
We left the hotel around 10:30 by cab. I had slept in more than I had wanted on account of a late night spent writing journal entries and e-mailing people from the internet cafe, but I still had ample time to try to score as much free breakfast food as I could. I wasn’t able to eat much though, maybe its the heavy Scottish cooking or just nerves, I don’t know.
After running around for a while trying to find the office, we got the keys to our flats. When I eventually maneuvered the bulk of my baggage into the flat, I found the place to be vacant and a letter from Erin waiting for me by the mail slot. The flat is nice enough-the carpet seems new, the furniture level, no roaches, etc., but by some cruel twist of fate, I’ve ended up in one of the few residences without internet or phone access in the rooms. Really lame. Oh well. I’ll have to subsist on internet cafes or other sources of access for the next six months. I went out for a while to pick up some things for the room: some drawing pins for the Edward Gorey calendar, hangers for the closet, and a plug adapter for my laptop. I cam back and put the room in order. Its actually nice to have so few possessions that its possible to set up the room in 15 minutes. I tried to read for a while, but eventually just took a nap, thereby killing my plans to check out the university’s science and engineering campus.
I finished reading Franny and Zooey. I really liked it. In the past weeks, Salinger has definitely become one of my favorite writers. He creates characters that are really interesting and human. They’re people that you seem to know, or at least wish you knew. So, Franny and Zooey are two seperate short stories (perhaps Zooey is too long to be a short story, but I think it reads like one anyway) which essentially are different parts to the same story. Franny and Zooey are brother and sister, the two youngest of the Glass children, all of which were (big surprise) incredibly precocious as children and are now coming to terms with being incredibly precocious in a world that can be dumb, egomaniacal, and at the least annoying. While away at college, Franny becomes frustrated with her life, her studies, her boyfriend, the world in general, I guess, has a nervous breakdown, and begins to explore some odd religious practice that she read about from one of the numerous religious and philisophical books provided by her older brothers. So the entire 200 pages or so of text take place in a few hours in terms of the narrative, but despite the slow pace, its really enjoyable. The characters are clever, in just the right way, not annoying, and one finds oneself really indentifying with Franny and her frustration, and contemplating Zooey’s advice as if he were your elder brother instead of Franny’s. Salinger seems to like writing about the unspectacular moments in life, the minor catastrophies, but despite the lack of intense drama, I’d rather read about Holden or Franny or Zooey any day over Hemingway’s hollow men. That’s the thing. Salinger’s characters are anything but hollow and when Zooey starts talking about the futility of blanket angst, the dialogue almost strikes too close to home:
"What I don't like at all is this little hair-shirty private life of a martyr you're living back at college-this little snotty crusade you think you're leading against everybody. ... Don't spring on me, now-for the most part, I agree with you. But I hate the kind of blanket attack you're making on it. I agree with you about ninety-eight per cent on the issue. But the other two percent scares me half to death. I had one professor when I was in college-just one, I'll grant you, but he was a big, big one-who just doesn't fit in with anything you've been talking about. He wasn't Epictetus. But he was no egomaniac, he was no faculty charm boy. He was a great and modest scholar. And what's more, I don't think I ever heard him say anything, either in or out of a classroom, that didn't seem to me to have a little bit of real wisdom in it-and sometimes a lot of it. What'll happen to him when you start your revolution? I can't bear to think about it-let's change the goddam subject. These other people you've been ranting about are something else again. ... I've had them by the dozens, and so has everybody else, and I agree, they're not harmless. They're as lethal as hell as a matter of fact. ... But what I don't like ... is the way you talk about these people. I mean you don't just despise what they represent-you despise them. It's too damn personal, Franny. I mean it. ... It's exactly like this damned ulcer I picked up. Do you know why I have it? Or at least nine-tenths of the reason I have it? Because when I'm not thinking properly, I let my feelings about television and everything else get personal. I do exactly the same thing you do, and I'm old enough to know better."
A few things I forgot to write about yesterday regarding differences between Edinburgh and the US. Yesterday, on the walking tour of campus, I noticed all these security cameras. Today, I noticed even more, in the dining room of a restaurant of all places. I guess those in the UK have a lower expectation of privacy than those in the US (though recent tests of cameras in city centers in the US seem to indicate we’re heading in the same direction). I also noticed lots of little kids running around with Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park shirts. Sheesh.